December flowers

It’s time for another Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post and I’d like to show you what’s flowering in my tiny London garden. Being December you might think that can’t be much but in my garden there is something in flower every single week of the year. December so far has been cold and we have had one night below freezing. That’s one night more than the whole of last winter – and winter last till end of February so I hope this is not a sign of a colder winter than usual. Despite temperatures between 2-8 degrees C the last 2 weeks the garden is still looking green and the spring bulbs are continuing to pop up everywhere.

The cooler weather has brought some nice sunny days lately, a change from the rain we had in November.

In the bed next to the patio almost all the pots are brought out, just two left to deal with, one is the huge calla lily – still green and lush despite the frost. The hyacinths are well on their way up in this bed, so are the snowdrops and daffodils too so it was just about time to chuck all the pots out.

And look at the adorable Camellia ‘Takanini’ in flower, I am so happy I ended up with this one last year, it was an eeny-meeny between several camellias and I had a hard time choosing. To be honest, I would have liked having all 8 on my short list, but tiny camellias do grow up eventually to demand their own big space, and I managed to stay sensible – just.

On the patio are my two magnolias, the leaves are gone and it’s easy to see that the tall ‘Heaven Scent’ will flower beautifully next spring too, whilst the smaller 'Red Lucky' has yet to produce a single flower bud.

And my nursery shelves are just bursting! So much that I have had to place pots on the ground as there is no more room on the shelves.

I have cuttings placed wherever I can find a space for them. Not sure what I will be doing with all these once they all become large mature plants, but I might be able to swap them for something interesting I would not have thought of growing :-)

On the nursery shelves I have a few of my miniature fuchsias. You can see next to my fingers just how tiny the flowers are. This is Fuchsia 'Fuksie Foetsie', a tender miniature which I intend to keep through the winter here on my nursery shelves. I have told all my fuchsias I expect them to survive and do well so they better behave. Tender or not.

My chillies have survived far longer than I expected, but I suppose now that we are in mid-December I should harvest the rest! The leaves went a bit soft that night we had frost but the fruit is perfectly all right.

Moving a bit further down in the garden and you can see where all the pots in the beds have ended up: along the path, like soldiers standing guard. The flowerbeds are almost empty, just waiting for all the bulbs to emerge.

But there are flowers here of course, ‘Annabelle’ is still flowering - for the 18th month in a row. OK, I know I keep saying it every GBBD post, but is it a record? Is it?? I do actually wish we get cold enough weather for all my fuchsias to get a proper break and go into dormancy, I think they need a rest now.

After all the rain we had in November my roses got a bit knocked back, and only the cream miniature rose has managed to produce an open flower by now, but there are buds on several of the other rose bushes.

My December garden is full of cyclamens, in all colours.

They look so cheerful, but unfortunately there are caterpillars around right now that also find them irresistible. They can devour a plant in just one day.

Skimmias don’t have any predators in my garden, these amazing flower buds stay like this for 6 months, from late autumn until April or so, when they open up to tiny white flowers. I have four Skimmias and would love to have more.

At the bottom of my garden it’s also becoming emptier in the flowerbeds and less space left on the path. The mop hydrangea at the bottom right is still looking good.

I have cut off all the hellebore leaves so now it’s just to lean back and wait for the flowers. Well, hey – the first flowers are already here! This is a Helleborus hybridus, a creamy spotted one, but you can’t see the spots until it opens up properly.

And this is Helleborus ericsmithii 'Winter Sunshine', not sure what’s been nibbling it but it could be slugs.

And this is Primula vulgaris Belarina 'Amethyst Ice', also a favourite lunch for the slugs.

Here is a plant the slugs won’t touch, slugs don’t like fuchsias! This is Fuchsia 'Marcus Graham'. The berries from this fuchsia tastes wonderful!

And this is ‘Bella Rosella’, the fuchsia with the absolute biggest flowers in my garden.

The alstroemeria is continuing to produce new flowers, this is ‘Dandy Candy’ and sometime next spring I will need to get this one a new brother or sister.

Before we leave my back garden, let me just show you what I got under the bench at my seating area. Here are all the plants I dug up from the front garden window baskets last month! I didn’t have the heart to just throw them away so they will stay here until spring and then it will be a question of what’s still alive. The dahlias I used in the front garden in the summer are a type most people use as annuals and just throw away at the end of the year, but you should see the size of these tubers! I could only just about squeeze them in to these pots. And the waterfall begonias were so beautiful in the summer so I thought I would try saving them too. We’ll see!

And here is my front garden now, in the bleak December sunshine, with the winter bedding already growing well.

Here is Primula vulgaris ‘Rosebud’ in yellow.

And in pink.

And this is the first of many Bellis perennis to come.

The Penstemon Pensham 'Amelia Jayne' in the container is still in full flower.

And in another container I have Garrya elliptica 'James Roof' – in a month or two these tassels will open up and flower into beautiful chains that looks like pearls.

At the moment the Garrya is doing a fine jobbing working as a Christmas tree, in my next post I will show you the Garrya with battery lights on at dark :-) Did you notice the pink boots in foreground? I got a Homebase gift card for my birthday and bought 3 pink pots for the money, 2 of them just standard pots for the back garden, the third one this shaped as boots. They are now all filled with daffodils at the bottom and crocuses on the top.

That was the roundtrip for this month’s GBBD post and as I am sitting here this evening writing, the temperature is 9 degrees C (48 F) in my garden and we are expecting a top temp tomorrow of around 10 C. With ten days till Christmas I guess a white Christmas here in London is just as unlikely this year as it has been for the past 120 or so years. Well, that is depending on how you define ‘White Christmas’ of course. The bookies over here define it as ‘one single snowflake falling on Buckingham Palace and/or The Met Office on Christmas Day’ (even if it melts on the way down) - and that happens occasionally. I must admit that’s not really enough for me! But a widespread covering of snow on the ground, at least an inch of snow, well that hasn’t happened in London on Christmas Day since 1895 apparently. Mind you, an inch of snow in London creates utter chaos, with complete standstill on the motor ways, cancelled planes and closed offices and shops. Better not wish for that for the Christmas week :-)

Not that I wish for snow in general, I must admit I have had enough of snow to last me the rest of my life and would much prefer really mild winters every year, but just for Christmas it would be nice with a good dusting of snow, and then it can melt away on Boxing Day!

Please visit our host Carol at May Dreams Garden for many more December gardens around the world. Until next time, take care.